WATCH: Our Hackathon encourages youth engagement in the EU Referendum

May 6, 2016

Over the weekend of the 23-24 April, we held a Hackathon at Runway East. We brought together programmers, designers and campaigners to try and solve the problem of young people in London not registering to vote.

It’s thought that less than half of all eligible young Londoners exercise their right to vote. We had a great turnout and the Hackathon made it on to page 2 of the Financial Times.

Our hackers were also joined by representatives from Bite The Ballot, Full Fact and Represent.me. Together they worked up six projects, all targeted at getting 18-24 year olds registered to vote.

We are taking four of them forward and hope to launch them soon. They are:

a mobile phone app that explains the EU referendum in simple language.

a Facebook and Twitter bot that answers questions about voting and finding your polling station.

a walk-through for first time voters covering the whole process, from registering to vote, right through to how to fill in your ballot paper at the polling station.

an interactive website that answers the common questions young people have about the EU, giving arguments for both Leave and Remain.